On-camera flash - shooting water drops

Bonjour all!

I've been stunned by recent pictures here where people are exploring some awesome techniques for water drop photos. Some of the lighting and captures of the collisions has been stunning.

As a rule I rarely shoot anything with a flash - I've not got any external flash units so only really get to use whatever flash is on camera. To date that's meant whatever I had with a G9/EOS400 and only very recently a EOS40D.

So, I thought I'd give it a whirl and try and work with the on-camera unit on the 40D and see if I could get anything usable. Well, it worked and the results where substantially better than I expected.

Here's a selection:-
















Here's the full set. I picked 20 out of 126 photos, truth be told I was satisfied with more than half of the shots I took which is unprecedented for a photo experiment!

Confession time.

Schoolboy error #1. I Didn't check or change the ISO. It was left way too quick so I had some noise in the early shots. Reason being I got a keeper on just my third shot so didn't cooly and calmly assess the situation.

Schoolboy error #2. I discovered very quickly that for a better looking image I should have used a flawless container. The first little tray I had had flakes of dust and some little tiny flecks of white in the bottom. These leapt out when magnified by the temporary 'lens' effect of the water. Ii changed to a teflon coated baking dish after that I I quite liked the effect of the sparkle this had.

The setup was dead easy and varying the height of the camera relative to the background that I was choosing to use for the lighting brought a lot of variation. The last shot above was a red mid glossy finish on a document wallet and then a copy of a sunday supplement magazine page advert. the white stripe down the middle is just the ends of the pages of the magazine.

So, I'm encouraged by the first try out... and it's almost enough to send me off to get an external flash.

Nice set, I like the first one the best.

Aye cool stuff All my shots were originally done with my onboard flash, even my first collisions, so it can be done.

But as you say an external does improve them immensely, and reduces the waiting time between shots while re-charging! Jessops does one for £70

Did you reduce the flash exposure compensation or was it on "0"?

AshMashMash said:

Did you reduce the flash exposure compensation or was it on "0"?

Click to expand...

No, left it alone. I had very few shots that were blowing out anywhere. The raw images required very little tweaking and generally all I did was push some contrast or a tone curve to accentuate whatever image/object I was using as the background.

bellebouche said:

No, left it alone. I had very few shots that were blowing out anywhere. The raw images required very little tweaking and generally all I did was push some contrast or a tone curve to accentuate whatever image/object I was using as the background.

Click to expand...

Ah coolcool! I believe, if you reduce the FEC then it makes the actual flash length quicker, so that and a dark room will allow you to capture the splashes at a quicker "shutter speed", effectively. Obviously you'd have to have a play with aperture and ISO to get more light in.

I love the form of #1, and the crop of #3, and the colours of #2

Great shots with the on camera flash, my first few with a dedicated Macro ring flash weren't that good! No. 5 would be a good Pepsi advert!

Thanks! That one was wild and only on reviewing them after I'd torn down the whole setup did I realise what I'd done.

It was - a red document wallet (matt finish) to the right and a folded copy of a weekend colour supplement on the left. The white stripe down the middle is just the fanned out ends of the pages in the paper magazine.

The variations available by monkeying around with the background colours - and the lighting they give make this a worthwhile exercise.